Nanowrimo: At the Starting Line Waiting for the Pistol

So what’s my Nanowrimo novel about?

Well, I think I’m still finding out at the moment! It hit me sometime ago that there was a story I had to write, with a fierce ache in my guts. It has its roots in my own life, but the ‘me’ in the story is not the ‘me’ that sits here writing this - she and I made different choices. And the ‘he’ in the story is not the actual ‘he’ either ... or any other actual 'he'. Both of these characters are beginning to take form as separate individuals and I’m still listening in my notebook to what they’re trying to tell me.

So yes, I'm a bit more organised than last year. I have at least a route map, though I do not know all, or even many, of the stopping points along the way. I have a beginning and some idea of how it might end. (But hey, in the final analysis, that's for my characters to decide, isn't it?) I have a setting - Malacca - a town I love very much.

So themes? What springs to mind … the difficulty of going back to a place when you’ve left it …the whole idea of trying to reach out and touch the past … change/progress versus standing still/stagnation … illiteracy vs. literacy … betrayal.

Will I make 50,000 words this month? Probably not. I have too much real life happening and more commitments than last year. But hey, I'll do my best.

And I'll be cheering on the crazy rest of you writing alongside ...

Index: On The Pleasures and Perils of Reading

• The War on Words (6/11/04)
• Miss Manner's Guide to Reading and Eating (1/12/04)
• Bookshelves Real and Virtual (8/2/05)
• Favourite Characters (5/3/05)
• Goldilocks (6/3/05)
• Word of Mouth Phenomena (7/3/05)
• When Do You Read? (19/3/05)
• Read and Become Wise (11/4/05)
• Biblioculling and Bibliocide (4/5/05)
• Literature Abuse (10/5/05)
• Prequels, Sequels and Morequels (13/5/05)
• Bibliotypes (31/5/05)
• Skimming Scanning Scumming and Skinning (2/7/05)
• Twelve Steps to Salvation (19/7/05)
• The World's Biggest Readers? (18/7/05)
• You Are what You Read (21/7/05)
• Of Thickie Pariahs and Books by the Yard (17/8/05)
• The Film of the Book (12/9/05)
• Would Would You Like a Free Book? (20/9/05)
• What Flavour is Your Novel? (23/9/05)
• Soap Oprah (26/9/05)
• Pretentious? Moi? (25/10/05)
• Judged by the Cover (26/10/05)
• Bookshelves Real and Virtual (9/12/05)
  
• Birthday Books (28/10/05)
• Reading - At Your Convenience (22/7/06)
  
• Tagged and Totalled (26/9/06)
  
• The Colour of Books (26/9/06)
  
• Shelfish Reasons (9/10/06)
• It's Official - Fiction Readers are Better People (25/10/06)
• Guilty Pleasures (4/1/07)
• Reading for Empathy (25/1/07)
• Liar! Liar! Books on Fire! (26/1/07)
  

Burgess Biographied

As for what remains, a dozen years after Burgess's death, and the prospects for his reputation, I kept thinking of some momentous, long-ago explosion, far out to sea, whose debris, even now, continues to wash fitfully up upon the lone, lorn 21st-century sands.

D J Taylor reviews Andrew Biswell's The Real Life of Anthony Burgess * in the Independent. It's a book I very much want to read, especially after having read Burgess' own biographies, Little Wilson and Big God and You've Had Your Time.

I am an unashamed lover of Burgess as I've said before. I actually chose to be posted to Kuala Kangsar in the '80's because I'd so enjoyed his trilogy and I guess that I was on my own little mission to try to understand him and the Malaya he painted. The town did not disappoint. It had more than its share of remarkable, eccentric characters. The Ubudiah mosque was still "as bulbous as a clutch of onions" and I became a paid-up bar-propping member of the Iblis (oops, sorry the Idris) Club .

But the school where he taught (MCKK) had completely forgotten him. There wasn't a copy of a single one of his books in the library. No plaque on the wall. I pondered on whether this was the result of an embarrassed silence (although Burgess had been even-handedly rude about all the races including the British in his writing) or genuine ignorance and indifference. Concluded the latter.

And of course there is the perfectly understandable desire to shed whatever remnants of the colonial legacy still persist. Merdeka wasn't struggled for for nothing and it isn't PC to honour a British writer. Never mind that he was arguably one of the most important literary figures of the C20th.

And in a the three and a half years I lived there, I met only one person who had known him personally. (Though years later, reading the autobiography, Abu suddenly recalled his housemaster Mr. Wilson ...).

I found this piece written by Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad recently. It gives, I think another perspective.

* You can win a copy of the new biography in a competition on the Anthony Burgess website.

The Painful Truth

Giving writing a chance meant risking not being good enough.

Juliet Sutcliffe faces the most painful possibility of all on her UEA Creative Writing M.A.

But among the things she learned:

I don't panic when a first draft is drivel (and it is always drivel), and most of all I understand that writing is mostly a question of hard work.

Pamuk on the Novel

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk on the importance on the novel to a society in this piece printed in today's Guardian.

Modern societies, tribes and nations do their deepest thinking about themselves through reading novels; through reading novels, they are able to argue about who they are; so even if we have picked up a novel hoping only to divert ourselves, and relax, and escape the boredom of everyday life, we begin, without realising, to conjure up the collectivity, the nation, the society to which we belong.

This is also why novels give voice not just to a nation's pride and joy, but also to its anger, its vulnerabilities, and its shame. It is because they remind readers of their shame, their pride, and their tenuous place in the world that novelists still arouse such anger, and what a shame it is that we still see outbursts of intolerance - that we still see books burned, and novelists prosecuted.

Pamuk himself faces prosecution next month for referring to his country's massacre of the Armenians.

The Jesper Fanclub

Meet Jesper the Talking Hamster. He's the official mascot for the 2005 Malaysian Nanowrimo and must be woven somewhere into everyone's Nanonovel.

Yes lunacy prevails, and last night we had out first Nanowrimo meet-up in the Booker Room at MPH 1 Utama. Folks came shyly, seriously, a little afraid at first. You could see the words "What am I letting myself in for on? Is it too late to run away?" behind everyone's eyes ...

Around 30 people turned up altogether. (Not bad when so many folks have begun the exodus from the Klang Valley ahead of next week's Deepavali and Hari Raya holidays.) Most were young (youngest 16) but of course there were a couple of us more 'mature' folks and a couple of older gentlemen whom I hope do decide to join us for the long haul. It was great too to meet up with some of the local bloggers including minishorts, eyeris, bawangmerah and Simon.

I answered a few questions about practicalities and then our ML's, Mabel and Erna turned up and took over. They'd put together some goody bags with Jesper's picure on the front, and a Nano survival kit inside which included chocolates and a sheet of ideas for practical suggestions for when you get stuck with your story (Problem: My plot makes absolutely no sense. Solution: Add a dinosaur.)

Mabel got everyone involved in a silly game which well and truly broke the ice, and then everyone introduced themselves and their novels. A comforting number of people said "I have absolutely no idea what my novel's going to be about but I'll just jump in and start writing it anyway." That's the spirit: who needs a plot?

When it was my turn, I told them I fancied writing something Banvillesque this year which got me a few strange looks ...

Erna wanted to record a message from the whole group to send across the world for the next Nanowrimo podcast. Malaysia's message? :

SELAMAT BERNANO!

Birthday Books

So I had the perfect excuse for guiltless book-buying yesterday, plus a 20% voucher from Times - it being my birthday month and all.

Had been eyeing Jane Smiley's 13 ways at Looking at the Novel for weeks. Smiley, herself a highly successful novelist, bases the book on a list of 100 novels which she felt "would illuminate the whole concept of the novel". It's a pretty eclectic list - covering the wide sweep of the novel's history and taking into account literature in translation. (This time I've read 28 and a half of the books on this list! Even more bookguilt!). Several of my favourite books of all time are listed there, but I don't always see eye to eye about them with Ms. Smiley (which is how it should be!)

I'm going to start reading on Chapter 10 A Novel of Your Own, and am looking forward to learning about her struggles with her own novel in Chapter 12 .


Then another book just flew into my hands. I tell you I was powerless.

See, I'm a birdwatcher.

A sometimes birdwatcher. An appaulingly bad birdwatcher. An incredibly lazy birdwatcher. A birdwatcher who prefers to sit in my favourite chair on the verandah and let the birds come to me. (But don't knock that - I had a pair of southern pied hornbills in my garden yesterday!)

But I've hung out with some of the best and most addicted guys in the country and have learned at first hand just how thrilling it can be, particularly when you spot a bird that's a first for you and work out for yourself precisely what it is from the field-guide.

In To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, A Son and a Lifetime Obsession Dan Koeppel describes his father's quest to compile his 'life list'. Richard Koeppel is an obsessive birdwatcher and has travelled to over 60 countries to spot over 7,000 species (The world total is somewhere around 10,000) at great personal and financial cost. It's an obession I understand and can sympathise with, having spent some joyous Sunday mornings in the wilds with members of MNS.

So, some happy reading to do, once I get past the "have to's" on my shelf. During the Nanowrimo month I think I'd rather not have someone else's fiction in my head anyway ...

The Menoporscheal Male

It's a perilous combination for a novelist: overnight success and the male menoporsche. (And no, that wasn't a typo.)

The Horsewhisperer author Nicholas Evans has experienced both reveals Cassandra Jardine in The Age. Evans talks about how his personal experiences have shaped his new novel The Divide.

Turning Antique!

Indulge me today. I'm getting nostalgic. When I did that meme thing a few weeks ago, I just had too many bits of life left over. Thought I'd use up these bits today.

Thirty years ago:

I was twenty years old and in my first year at a teacher training college in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. I lodged in nearby Droitwich Spa with another student, a sweet, ditsy girl called Valerie, who drove us to college every morning in her beat up car which we had to push down the hill to get started. Val and I soon asked to be moved to new accomodation when we found ourselves roped in as unpaid babysitters, and the hot water rationed.

Halfway through our first term moved to stay with the Pages, who lived just walking distance from the college in a beautiful big house full of books and were extremely kind to us.

It was a year of discovery for me. The formidable Dr. McGowan was as kindly as she was gruff, but how we quaked in her classes! She introduced us to Eliot, and Conrad, and Patrick White and Browning and William Golding. A buffet of literary excellence to whet our appetites for what we'd be studying later on.


And this was the year I discovered opera. My landlord, Jim Page was the music critic for the Bromsgrove Messenger and got free tickets to all the major performances in Birmingham. In swift succession I got whisked off to The English National Opera's productions of The Ring cycle, Il Travatore, Tosca and was hooked for life.

At weekends I'd hitchhike, not home to see my parents in Meriden, but to The Boyfriend's squalid bedsit in Coventry. He was studying at the School of Music and trying to decide whether to study formal composition or just join a rock band and move to London. My musical education (everything from Joni Mitchell, through Frank Zappa, Soft Machine, and weird experimental jazz to Mozart, Schoenburg and Peter Maxwell Davies) was safe in his hands ... though my heart wasn't. Weekends we'd go to see plays at the Belgrade Theatre or I'd accompany him to concerts where he played clarinet solos with amateur orchestras and wind groups for a little extra cash.

Forty years ago
Ten years old and in Mrs. Marsden's class at St. Edward's Catholic School, Coleshill. Mrs. Marsden believed in strict segregation. Her 44 students were arranged in three islands: Top group, Middle Group and Bottom Group. The boys were seated at her end of the room: the easier to whack them with the ruler if they misbehaved. I was in Top Group, though I feared relegation at any moment - my friends has threatened to rat on me about the ink blots in my science book.

I sat between Linda McCrilley (who always had this stale smell about her because her dad owned a pig farm and she helped with the swill before coming to school), and my best friend Deirdre who was my mentor in shop-lifting.

We started the day with Hail Mary and Our Father, catechism class ("Who made you?" "God made me"), recitation of times tables, and a fifteen minute burst of mental arithmatic. We listened to schools' programmes broadcast on the BBC during the music and science periods, and heard Homer's wonderful Odyssey in episodes. Mrs. Marsden taught everything apart from music when we were dragged over to the hall by Mrs. Pendlebury to sing "The sun is a-coming to welcome the day, Hey ho come to the fair” while she bashed at the piano.

On Friday afternoons were my favourites We had painting and we were all jealous of the mournful Margaret Downs when Mrs. Marsden praised the maturity of her work. She painted all her pictures (whether of the Annunciation or Cyclops' cave) solely in moody red and black.

Play times were always spent with gap-toothed Laureen Howard, saving the treasures of Atlantis from the bottom of a tropical ocean, or piloting Thunderbirds 8 for International Rescue, or swapping the Man from Uncle cards which came free with squares of pink bubblegum.

I dawdled home as slowly as possible with Deidre, each of us daring the other into new dangers after school. I stopped the dare business after a particularly hairy escapade left me hanging for dear life by my fingertips on the outside struts of a bridge with a twenty-foot drop and a rushing river beneath me. Good job my over-protective mum never knew.

My family was living temporarily in a postwar prefabricated house (the malaysian equivalent would surely be 'low cost') at the bottom of the hill, while our new house (designed by my dad) was being built.

It was a year of Enid Blyton. I devoured the Malory Towers series in preparation, I thought, for how things would be at my secondary school.



50 years ago (today)

Sharon Joyce Young born at St Francis Private Hospital to Leonard James Young (Road Engineer) and Kitty Ella Young (formerly Turner) of 21 Abbey Drive, Leicester. With a whole lot of memories in my head that couldn't possibly be mine.

Today I have become an antique!

Judged by the Cover

The debate about the snob value of books continues in the Guardian with some timely advice delivered by John Sutherland. If you want to impress in Britain:

"Never, never, never be seen with a book which has a "3 for 2" or "£6 off" discount sticker on it."

(On the other hand fellow Malaysians might be impressed with your canny shopping skills.)

The best question to ask when not sure whether to purchase that new book or not:

"Does my sensibility look big in this?"

I think I looked rather fetching in the Bukowski.

A Single Emblematic Moment to Catch the Whole

Neither novel. Nor poem.

Yet sharing much with both.
A lovely hybrid form,
which catches people
at crucial moments of their lives

and snaps them.

A whole life in a few pages.
Huge dilemmas packed
Into a small moment

of belief.

Of course you guessed the nature of the "lovely hybrid". Leon has some excellent quotes from writer Jackie Kay which you should engrave on your heart if you write in this form.

Reprise : Air and Light and Time and Space

To revive an old theme - those folks who say they simply do not have time to spare to write their magnum opus could learn a thing or too from Clare Morrall's example.

You may remember that Morrall was shortlisted the 2003 Booker with Astonishing Splashes of Colour, published by the independent Tindal Street Press.

Morrall works full-time as a music teacher in a Birmingham primary school and gives lessons to her older pupils after school hours.

The Bookseller reports:

For a long time, her writing was fitted around a very demanding schedule of both teaching and single-handedly bringing up her two daughters, now in their 20s, following a divorce. ... Writing was fitted in as best she could: "When the children were little there were early bedtimes, but that didn't last too long. For a time all I had was one morning a week for a couple of months and the occasional Saturday afternoon when they all went off with their father. So it was very difficult to squeeze it in. but I just got on with it. A lot of people talk about how they want to be a writer, but if you want to be a writer, you do it."

She works at the house of one of the other women from her school because she feels the need to get away from her own house to write: "She has this wonderful big house, so I can go up to the top floor and sit there on my own."

Nanuts in Star Two!

The lovely Michael Cheang has penned a very nice feature about the local Nanowrimo for Star Two. It nicely captures the general sense of insanity and I hope the publicity will get many more folks enthused.

(Small factual inaccuracy though - there were 40 Malaysian participants last year and 10 winners.)

The first meet-up is scheduled for this Friday (Oct 28), at 7pm in the Booker Room of MPH 1-Utama, Petaling Jaya.

If you want to take part, register at the official website and then check out the official Malaysian NaNoWriMo blog.

Hmmm ... looks like our ML Erna already has a photo for her book jacket!

Publishing as Self-induced Misery

Get yourself published and your woes are over? Writes Elizabeth Royte in the New York Times:

... the contemporary author trudges along a predictable path that can only be described, in hindsight, as self-induced misery ...

If you wannabe-publisheds aren't sufficiently depressed by the end of the article, you might like to go back to this post!

Pretentious? Moi?

Want to look more intelligent than you really are? Quick, grab a book!

Says John Ezard in the Guardian:

Books are the new snobbery, according to a survey today. Social competitiveness about which titles we read has become one of the new mass forces of the era and only middle-aged people are relatively free of it.

Driven partly by pressure from incessant literary prize shortlists, more than one in three consumers in London and the south-east admit having bought a book "solely to look intelligent", the YouGov survey says.

It finds one in every eight young people confessing to choosing a book "simply to be seen with the latest shortlisted title". This herd instinct dwindles to affect only one in 20 over-50 year-olds.

"The latest literary pressure is keeping up with the rest of your fellow travellers and commuters. Bookshelf contents are fast becoming as studied and planned as outfits as a way to impress others. Books shortlisted for prestigious literary panel awards are becoming 'de rigueur' reading for many."

Okay ...but it might not work here in Malaysia. Who is going to be impressed to see you posing around with the latest prize-winning title as you strap hang on the LRT? I get strange looks all the time when I read in public ...

Portrait!

Thanks Marisa!

After Hunter

A very poignant interview with Hunter S. Thompson's widow, Anita from The Observer.

Just bought a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The Author Photo

Should we get rid of author photos on bookcovers?

Bookslut links to Frances Wilson's piece in the Guardian.

The author photo on the inside cover of a book is a fairly recent innovation and clearly reflects the celebrityisation of contemporary culture. Author as commodity to be sold. (The same has happened with musicians on the cover of classical music CD's over the years ...)

Male authors, says the article, have it easier as "like dentists" they:

... should be both trusted and feared. Fanning out a handful of blue Pelican popular philosophy books from the 1950s, one encounters on the back a series of passport-sized pictures showing granite-faced, set-jawed gentlemen in late middle age, accessorised with a pipe, a thistly tweed jacket or patent leather hair. Their appeal to the reader could not be described as obviously erotic but we know we are in the hands of a sturdy thinker. A diluted version of the same approach can often be found in the author photos of contemporary male novelists, although the pipe has become metaphorical and moleskin is the new tweed. The face is crevassed with shadow, propped up on a fist, the brow furled.

The woman writer on the other hand, "must be able to do more than spin a sentence together". She notes that Zadie Smith's inside-flap picture:

... was by far the largest image among this year's Booker-shortlisted novels and the only one in colour. It is hard to see how it could not impact on readers' impressions of her work. The fabulously groomed mane and decidedly unfurled brow of the "highly promotable" woman writer, of which Smith's image is an iconic example, is not only guaranteed to stir up a tangy mixture of aspiration, desire and envy; it is also a distraction from the compact between reader and writer.

Now I actually approve wholeheartedly of the author photo on the bookcover ... it's fun to try to work out what kind of people the writers are and whether you think you'd actually warm to them in real life. But literature ain't a beauty contest!

I love the craggier faces of older women writers (Proulx, Bainbridge, Lessing, Rubens) who've clearly lived life to the full and arrived in their own skin without apologies. Truly the most transforming cosmetic a woman can put on her face is intelligence!

Wilson talks about how "wincingly awkward" it was posing for her own author photo. (Her latest book is The Courtesan's Revenge.)

I sort of had a taste of the same the other day with Marisa chasing me round Silverfish with a camera for a profile picture for chrome. The whole process simultaneously flattering and terrifying. In the end I decided that the best pose was one with a book covering my face. If it turns out well I'll show it to you another day.

(Liked the Guardian's rather irreverent approach to the author photo in their earlier competition!)

The EVO Approach

Thought this a nice addition to the discussion of getting kids to read I got so carried away with yesterday ...

Daphne Lee in her Tots To Teens column in Starmag today talks about the EVO Approach:

OK, those of you who read this column regularly are probably saying, “Oh, no, there she goes again. She sounds like a broken record.” Well, I’m also writing Tots to Teens for people who have only just come across it; new parents maybe; or educators; people who would like to nurture the reading habit in their little ones, or people who are simply interested in promoting literacy, and who maybe need help in figuring out what they can do to make a difference.

And so ... EVO! This is a little something I’ve come up with to act as a simple guide to what you need to give children if you want them to love reading and books. Exposure. Variety. Own choice. EVO!

To elaborate: Kids need to be surrounded by books and reading from the word go; they need to know that there are lots of different kinds of books out there for their enjoyment, not just, say, mysteries or fairytales or, heaven forbid, workbooks. And they need to be allowed to say, “I don’t really fancy J.K. Rowling. Give me Louisa Alcott instead.” Or vice versa.

Of course, the sooner they experience all of the above, the better. Above all else, read, read and read to your kids. At bedtime is always nice, but if little Jon crawls into your lap first thing in the morning and hands you Dr Seuss, seize the moment and run with it. And if you’re too tired, you can just look at the pictures together.

EVO? It's a winning formula!

The 100 Greatest Novels!

I just love booklists! TIME magazine features a list of the top 100 novels published since 1923. The urge to compare one's bookaddled self against such a list is irresistible.

I scored 33 and a half (I left Atonement half-way through distracted by other books I had to read!) and feel significant amounts of bookguilt about the 66 and a half I need to make a start on.

Of course any list is subjective. This one is weighted towards American writing. There's an interesting discussion going where readers talk about the books that should be on the list.